William Hall is a Conservative Campaigner and a Regional Chairman of the Conservative Party.
Last July the New Statesman ran a striking headline: “Just raise tax!”
In the accompanying piece, Will Dunn argued that Rachel Reeves could not tweak her way out of the fiscal crisis facing Labour. The tax system, he insisted, must be torn down and rebuilt to extract more revenue. I read it with a mixture of disbelief and recognition. Disbelief, because the diagnosis is wrong; recognition, because it perfectly illustrates the left’s default response to every problem – more state, more taking.
The real crisis is not too little tax. It is the steady, incremental erosion of property rights that has turned ownership from a cornerstone of liberty into something provisional, subject to the whim of the Treasury. Small tweaks to existing taxes, combined with new levies introduced under the cover of “fairness” or nudges to make the individual behave differently, have become a creeping interference in individual liberty and a dead weight on growth. This stealthy gradual erosion of property rights has been done without debate and without our consent.
Consider what has happened to the family home – the most tangible expression of property ownership for millions of Britons. Stamp duty has been repeatedly adjusted: surcharges on second homes, higher rates for non-residents, and thresholds that have failed to keep pace with house prices. Dressed up as a nudge to cool an overheated market it has become a serious barrier to mobility. The Shadow Cabinet’s promise to abolish stamp duty on primary homes is excellent.
Fiscal drag on income tax bands has pulled more and more people into higher rates of tax. By 2030 almost 5 million additional people may pay the higher rate of tax thanks to this drag, meanwhile their hard-earned spending power diminishes. Add to this increases in capital gains and dividend tax rates, and repeated tweaks to employer National Insurance – these all have a cumulative effect.
These are not dramatic one-off measures. That is precisely the point. Each change is presented as modest, technical, or targeted. Together they amount to a fundamental shift: the state now claims a larger and more arbitrary share of what individuals create and own.
Under Labour’s watch the tax burden has reached peacetime highs as a share of GDP. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s own forecasts show how these incremental rises choke off the very activity needed to generate revenue in the first place.
The New Statesman article wants the system “torn down”. What it really means is a larger state extracting more from citizens to fund unreformed public spending. This misunderstands both economics and human nature. High effective marginal rates – sometimes exceeding 60 per cent when taxes and benefit withdrawal are combined – discourage work, investment and risk-taking. Family businesses, farmers and private landlords face a regulatory and fiscal thicket that makes ownership feel temporary rather than secure. When government can take 40 per cent or more through various channels, the question arises: do we really own our property at all?
Conservatives have never seen property rights as an abstract legal doctrine. From the common law traditions that predate the modern state to Disraeli’s vision of a property-owning democracy and Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy revolution, we have understood that ownership fosters responsibility, independence and social cohesion.
The left’s answer – simply raise tax – is not radical; it is regressive. It entrenches dependency, penalises the thrifty, and treats the productive economy as a handy convenience when their latest vanity project fails and needs extra cash. History shows the alternative. When Conservatives have cut taxes and simplified the system, activity has increased, revenues have eventually risen, and living standards have improved.
As the Conservative Party rebuilds, we must place the defence of property rights at the heart of our offer. That means ending fiscal drag, indexing thresholds properly, reforming council tax and inheritance tax to protect family assets, and committing to lower, simpler taxes overall. It means controlling public spending rather than endlessly expanding it.
My argument is not solely economic. It is also about principle. Next time the Treasury identifies some new pet project, they will do what they always do and reach into our pockets to pay for it, rather than exercise the financial self-discipline that falls on any business owner.
Margaret Thatcher famously said “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” At no point did our representatives vote for abolition of property rights and give us the opportunity to hold them to account for it.
Like all overreaches by the state, it happened quietly and now we are all paying for it
William Hall is a Conservative Campaigner and a Regional Chairman of the Conservative Party.
Last July the New Statesman ran a striking headline: “Just raise tax!”
In the accompanying piece, Will Dunn argued that Rachel Reeves could not tweak her way out of the fiscal crisis facing Labour. The tax system, he insisted, must be torn down and rebuilt to extract more revenue. I read it with a mixture of disbelief and recognition. Disbelief, because the diagnosis is wrong; recognition, because it perfectly illustrates the left’s default response to every problem – more state, more taking.
The real crisis is not too little tax. It is the steady, incremental erosion of property rights that has turned ownership from a cornerstone of liberty into something provisional, subject to the whim of the Treasury. Small tweaks to existing taxes, combined with new levies introduced under the cover of “fairness” or nudges to make the individual behave differently, have become a creeping interference in individual liberty and a dead weight on growth. This stealthy gradual erosion of property rights has been done without debate and without our consent.
Consider what has happened to the family home – the most tangible expression of property ownership for millions of Britons. Stamp duty has been repeatedly adjusted: surcharges on second homes, higher rates for non-residents, and thresholds that have failed to keep pace with house prices. Dressed up as a nudge to cool an overheated market it has become a serious barrier to mobility. The Shadow Cabinet’s promise to abolish stamp duty on primary homes is excellent.
Fiscal drag on income tax bands has pulled more and more people into higher rates of tax. By 2030 almost 5 million additional people may pay the higher rate of tax thanks to this drag, meanwhile their hard-earned spending power diminishes. Add to this increases in capital gains and dividend tax rates, and repeated tweaks to employer National Insurance – these all have a cumulative effect.
These are not dramatic one-off measures. That is precisely the point. Each change is presented as modest, technical, or targeted. Together they amount to a fundamental shift: the state now claims a larger and more arbitrary share of what individuals create and own.
Under Labour’s watch the tax burden has reached peacetime highs as a share of GDP. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s own forecasts show how these incremental rises choke off the very activity needed to generate revenue in the first place.
The New Statesman article wants the system “torn down”. What it really means is a larger state extracting more from citizens to fund unreformed public spending. This misunderstands both economics and human nature. High effective marginal rates – sometimes exceeding 60 per cent when taxes and benefit withdrawal are combined – discourage work, investment and risk-taking. Family businesses, farmers and private landlords face a regulatory and fiscal thicket that makes ownership feel temporary rather than secure. When government can take 40 per cent or more through various channels, the question arises: do we really own our property at all?
Conservatives have never seen property rights as an abstract legal doctrine. From the common law traditions that predate the modern state to Disraeli’s vision of a property-owning democracy and Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy revolution, we have understood that ownership fosters responsibility, independence and social cohesion.
The left’s answer – simply raise tax – is not radical; it is regressive. It entrenches dependency, penalises the thrifty, and treats the productive economy as a handy convenience when their latest vanity project fails and needs extra cash. History shows the alternative. When Conservatives have cut taxes and simplified the system, activity has increased, revenues have eventually risen, and living standards have improved.
As the Conservative Party rebuilds, we must place the defence of property rights at the heart of our offer. That means ending fiscal drag, indexing thresholds properly, reforming council tax and inheritance tax to protect family assets, and committing to lower, simpler taxes overall. It means controlling public spending rather than endlessly expanding it.
My argument is not solely economic. It is also about principle. Next time the Treasury identifies some new pet project, they will do what they always do and reach into our pockets to pay for it, rather than exercise the financial self-discipline that falls on any business owner.
Margaret Thatcher famously said “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” At no point did our representatives vote for abolition of property rights and give us the opportunity to hold them to account for it.
Like all overreaches by the state, it happened quietly and now we are all paying for it